Me and my cousin started collecting these die cast metal robots in the 80’s. He is the one who got me started after his vacation to Japan in 1985. These are the robots in our collections. I thought it would be nice to share what is in our collection and its nice to have an online catalog of everything we have.
My cousin had his out on display for 30 years(since the freakin 80’s can you believe it?). I have never had the space and my collection did not grow until the early 2000’s because of eBay. He got almost all of his on trips to Japan. Too bad he got rid of all the packaging on his robots. He usually brought back a robot for me on each trip. Thanks Dave. I started this site to catalog my collection and to have a virtual display as I do not have the space at home and I hate dusting. I also hate trying to remember if I have a robot or not. It drives me nuts. So this will help me remember what I have. Since I can’t write for crap(the stuff I write is repetitive, boring even to me) or take pictures well at all, this site ended up better than I thought. It still evolving as I learn more and grow.
This whole project has been a great learning process.
- Using a mobile phone(my iPhone 4) to take pictures is still not ready for prime time. I had to switch back to a digital camera(Now in 2016 back to my Samsung Note 3 which has a better camera!)
- I realize using a tripod for pictures is the best way to go now.
- Using lower definition images make the site quite a bit faster(my camera takes huge pics!).
- I need a better image editor(using Paint.net). Any suggestions?
- Youtube and Hulu is a great way to see anime on robots that never made it out here as well as Crunchyroll(watching the same ad 5 times in a row is hell. Damn you Crunchyroll!) and Manga on the Roku
- I have learned a lot about my robots checking out other sites listed on Favorite Links page.
My cousin goes to Japan every other year. The 80’s stuff is not that prevalent even in the shops in Japan now, that or my cousin cannot find the shops that have them. It would help if he spoke some Japanese. The shop owners will not let him take pictures, so he has to play secret agent man to text me some pix. Not sure what the deal is there.
Dave did manage to find the older stuff on the latest trip, but they are expensive! I might just stick to eBay.
UPDATE – We went to Japan in October this year. They had some really cool 80’s robots. Mostly at Mandarake and a little at Toy Planet. We found Takatoku, Popy, Clover and Machine Robo robots.
His collection is authored by Dave and you will see my collection noted authored by CCC.
Please add your comments to the site. We would appreciate any ways to improve it or suggestions on what we can add. Feel free to ask any questions as well.